File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0307, message 25


Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 11:00:10 -0400
From: Richard Moodey <moodey001-AT-mail1.gannon.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: [fyi] Interview with Manuel De Landa - part 1


Hi Jan and Mervyn,

Thanks for sending this on, Jan.  One reading is not enough for me.  I am 
still not sure what the "flat ontology" of individuals means.  I'm going to 
have to think about it some more.

Dick

At 09:44 PM 07/06/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi Jan, all
>
>I found this very interesting (if somewhat limited as social theory, 
>underpinned as his position is by 'a flat ontotolgy of individuals'). 
>Thanks. Do you have the CTHEORY reference for it please?
>
>"Roy Bhaskar wants it all to be about self-organized criticality (his sand 
>piles with fractal avalanches)"
>
>I love this. But is it De Landa's gloss on Bhaskar on contradiction, 
>emergence, process, rhythmics etc, or does Bhaskar write in these terms 
>specifically somewhere?
>
>Re 'self-organized criticality' cf DPF on emergence, p. 49 "There is a 
>quantum leap, or nodal line, of (one feels like saying) the materialized 
>imagination - or even, with Hegel, reason - akin to that occurring in the 
>s or t  transforms of the epistemological dialectic. This is matter as 
>creative, as autopoietic."
>
>Mervyn
>
>In message <l03130300bb2cd65ac910-AT-[195.86.123.47]>, Jan Straathof 
><janstr-AT-chan.nl> writes
>>Dear All,
>>
>>below an interview with the philosopher Manuel De Landa,
>>although his realism seems influenced most by Deleuze's, he
>>speaks quite favorably of Bhaskar too. It's kinda longish so
>>i send it in three parts.
>>
>>enjoy,
>>Jan
>>
>>-----------------
>>1000 Years of War:
>>CTHEORY Interview with Manuel De Landa
>>
>>Manuel de Landa in conversation with: Don Ihde, Casper Bruun Jensen, Jari 
>>Friis
>>Jorgensen, Srikanth Mallavarapu, Eduardo Mendieta, John Mix, John 
>>Protevi, and
>>Evan Selinger.
>>
>>
>>Manuel De Landa, distinguished philosopher and principal figure in the "new
>>materialism" that has been emerging as a result of interest in Deleuze and
>>Guattari, currently teaches at Columbia University. Because his research into
>>"morphogenesis" -- the production of stable structures out of material 
>>flows --
>>extends into the domains of architecture, biology, economics, history, 
>>geology,
>>linguistics, physics, and technology, his outlook has been of great 
>>interest to
>>theorists across the disciplines. His latest book on Deleuze's realist
>>ontology, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002), comes in the 
>>wake of
>>best-sellers: War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), where De Landa
>>assumes the persona of the "robot historian" to bring the natural and social
>>sciences into dialogue vis-a-vis using insights found in nonlinear dynamics
>>to analyze the role of information technology in military history, and A
>>Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (1997), where he carves out a space for
>>geological, organic, and linguistic materials to "have their say" in 
>>narrating
>>the different ways that a single matter-energy undergoes phase transitions of
>>various kinds, resulting in the production of the semi-stable structures that
>>are constitutive of the natural and social worlds. When Evan Selinger 
>>gathered
>>together the participants for the following interview, his initial intention
>>was to create an interdisciplinary dialogue about the latest book. In 
>>light of
>>current world events -- which have brought about a renewed fascination 
>>with De
>>Landa's thoughts on warfare -- and in light of the different participant
>>interests, an unintended outcome came about. A synoptic and fruitful
>>conversation occurred that traverses aspects of De Landa's oeuvre.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>I. War, Markets & Models
>>CTHEORY (Mendieta): In these times of "a war against terrorism," and 
>>preparing
>>against "bioterrorism" and "germ warfare," do you not find it interesting,
>>telling, and ironic in a dark and cynical way that it is the Western,
>>Industrialized nations that are waging a form of biological terrorism,
>>sanctioned and masked by legal regulations imposed by the WTO and its legal
>>codes, like Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Would you agree that the
>>imposition of GMO -- genetically modified organism -- through WTO, NAFTA, and
>>IMF, on the so-called developing world is a form of "legalized biotech and
>>biological" terrorism? And then, as a corollary, what are the prospects for
>>global justice and equity in light precisely of the yawing gap between
>>developed and underdeveloped nations that is further deepened by the
>>asymmetrical access to technologies like genetic engineering and genomic
>>mapping?
>>
>>Manuel De Landa: Though I understand what you are getting at I do not 
>>think it
>>is very useful to use this label (biological terrorism) for this phenomenon.
>>The point, however, is well taken. The way in which corporations are
>>encroaching around the most sensitive points of the food chain is dangerous:
>>they direct the evolution of new crops from the processing end, disregarding
>>nutritional properties if they conflict with industrial ones; the same
>>corporations which own oil (and hence fertilizers and herbicides) also 
>>own seed
>>companies and other key inputs to farming; and those same corporations 
>>are now
>>transferring genes from one species to another in perverse ways (genes for
>>herbicide resistance transferred from weeds to crops). When one couples these
>>kind of facts with the old ones about the link between colonialism and the
>>conversion of many world areas into food supply zones for Europe (from the
>>creation of sugar plantations to the taking over of the 
>>photosynthetically most
>>active areas of the world by Europe's ex-colonies) we can realize that this
>>state of affairs does have consequences for equity and justice. The key point
>>is not to oversimplify: the Green Revolution, for example, failed not because
>>of the biological aspect, but because of the economic one: the very real
>>biological benefits (plants bred to have more edible biomass) could only be
>>realized under economies of scale and these have many hidden costs (power
>>concentration, deskilling of workforce) which can offset the purely technical
>>benefits.
>>
>>The question of Intellectual Property rights is also complex. We should 
>>be very
>>careful how we deal with this, particularly considering many of us bring old
>>moral clichs ("private property is theft") into the debate without being
>>aware of it. I believe this issue needs to be handled case by case (to solve
>>the inherent conflict between lack of accessibility and incentive to create).
>>For example, I am completely opposed to the patenting of genes but not of 
>>gene
>>products, like proteins.
>>
>>CTHEORY (Mix): In War in the Age of Intelligent Machines you discuss the 
>>German
>>Blitzkrieg of WWII in relation to a synergistic tactic that unified air and
>>ground troops. If we return to this time period, it becomes noteworthy to
>>highlight that the synergy fell apart when the machinery, specifically the
>>ground forces (i.e. tanks, jeeps, personnel transports, etc.) broke down and
>>the soldiers manning them could not get them operational, and were forced to
>>get mechanics to do the repairs, or else hope that the supply lines were kept
>>open to bring in replacement vehicles. By contrast, many of the American 
>>G.I.s
>>were "grease monkeys" and could easily repair their own vehicles. Since 
>>many of
>>the components of the ground vehicles were interchangeable, they could 
>>scavenge
>>usable pieces from damaged equipment, therein being able to fix problems 
>>on the
>>spot and remain operationally mechanized. My question is: Because 
>>contemporary
>>military technology is built on principles that the average G.I. is not
>>familiar with (i.e. the compatibility between the standard engine and 
>>military
>>ground vehicles no longer exists), do you think that the benefits of the war
>>machine will be outstripped by the lack of serviceability that probably will
>>arise in the field under combat conditions? Do you think that we should be
>>training our soldiers differently or do you think that we should modify the
>>technologies they use?
>>
>>De Landa: One of the themes of the War book was the tendency of military
>>organizations to get "humans out of the loop." Throughout the book (and in my
>>only live lecture to the military) I have very strongly criticized this, 
>>urging
>>for the lowering of decision-making thresholds so that soldiers in the field
>>with access to real time information have more power to make decisions than
>>their superiors at the Pentagon. (This theme, of course, goes beyond the
>>military to any kind of centralized decision-making situation, including
>>economic planning.) The problem you raise is, I believe, related to this. If
>>all technological decisions are made centrally without thinking of issues of
>>maintenance in the field, and if there is no incentive for field soldiers to
>>become "grease monkeys" or "hackers," the army that results is all the more
>>brittle for that. Flexibility implies that knowledge and know-how are not
>>monopolized by central planners but exist in a more decentralized form.
>>
>>CTHEORY (Protevi): War in the Age of Intelligent Machines came out in 1991,
>>just at the time of Operation Desert Storm. Do you see any noteworthy
>>developments in the integration of information technology and artificial
>>intelligence into US security / military operations from the time of Desert
>>Storm, through Afghanistan and the Second Gulf War? I have two particular 
>>areas
>>I would ask you to comment on: (1) developments in what you call the
>>Panspectron in surveillance; and (2) the use of the robot drone plane to 
>>kill 6
>>suspected al-Qaida members in Yemen: is this a decisive step forward in your
>>history of the development of autonomous killer machines, or is it just 
>>more of
>>the same, that is, AI as an adjunct, without true executive capabilities?
>>Finally, do you see any utility to the claim (a variation on the old
>>"technological imperative" idea) that, among many other factors in the Bush
>>Administration, certain elements of the Pentagon support the war campaign as
>>providing a testing ground for their new weapons systems?
>>
>>De Landa: I do not see the threshold I warned against (the emergence of
>>predatory machines) as having been crossed yet. The drone plane was being
>>remotely guided, wasn't it? At the level of surveillance I also fail to 
>>see any
>>dramatic development other than a quantitative increase in computing power.
>>What has changed is the direction that the migration of "intelligence" into
>>weapons has taken, from the creation of very expensive smart bombs to the use
>>of GPS-based cheap equipment that can be added to existing dumb bombs.
>>
>>I am not sure the Pentagon has a hidden agenda for testing their new weapons
>>but I do think that it has been itching for a war against Iraq for years 
>>before
>>9-11, in a similar way they were itching for one during the Cuban missile
>>crisis in the 60's. It was tough for Kennedy to resist them then, and so Bush
>>had very little chance to do it particularly because he has his own family
>>scores to settle.
>>
>>CTHEORY (Mix): Medieval archers occupied the lowest rung of the military
>>hierarchy. They were looked down upon and thought of as completely 
>>expendable,
>>not only because the archers were mostly untrained peasants, but also in part
>>because the equipment they used was quite ineffectual. At the level of 
>>military
>>ethos, one could say that the archer lacked the romantic stature of the 
>>knight
>>because their style of combat was predicated on spatial distance -- shooting
>>from far away seemed cowardly, whereas face-to-face sword combat had an 
>>aura of
>>honor to it. The situation changed for the English, however, due to the
>>introduction of the long bow (a development that was materially dependent on
>>the availability of the wood in the region, the yew trees). Years of training
>>were invested in teaching the English archers to use this weapon with deadly
>>effectiveness. Consequently, their stature increased, and for the first time,
>>pride could be taken in being an archer. Today, some critics charge that 
>>using
>>unmanned drones is cowardly because it involves striking at a distance. 
>>We can
>>thus see the situation as somewhat analogous to the arrow let loose by the
>>Medieval archer. My question is: Will the drones let loose by servicemen ever
>>lose their stigma in the same way as the English archers did? Clearly, the
>>drones like the English archers proved to be successful in battle. And 
>>yet, the
>>image of the drone controlled by a serviceman does not evoke the same 
>>humanity
>>as the embodied Englishman.
>>
>>De Landa: I agree that in military history questions of "honor" have always
>>influenced decisions to adopt a particular weapon. And distance per se 
>>was not
>>always the main reason: early rifles were not particularly liked due to their
>>increased precision, and the practices this led to (the emergence of snipers)
>>were seen as dishonorable. Yet, once Napoleon had changed the paradigm from
>>battles of attrition to battles of annihilation harassing the enemy via 
>>snipers
>>became quite acceptable. Even more problematic was the effect of the 
>>rifle and
>>the conoidal bullet in changing traditional hierarchies as infantry could now
>>defeat artillery, forcing the latter to hide behind defensive positions (a
>>hiding which must have carried a bit of stigma at first but that went away
>>fast). I think the use of drones will only be seen as problematic from the
>>"honor" point of view for a very short time.
>>
>>CTHEORY (Mallavarapu): In your work you challenge anthropomorphic and
>>anthropocentric versions of history. What implications does this have for
>>politics in an increasingly militarized world? More specifically, is there a
>>danger of the idea of self-organizing systems being used to justify and
>>celebrate increasing militarization and the growth of so-called "free market"
>>economies?
>>
>>De Landa: I'll begin with the latter. Theories of self-organization are 
>>in fact
>>being used to explain what Adam Smith left unexplained: how the invisible 
>>hand
>>is supposed to work. From a mere assumption of optimality at equilibrium 
>>we now
>>have a better description of what markets do: they take advantage of
>>decentralized dynamics to make use of local information (the information
>>possessed by buyers and sellers). These markets are not optimizing since
>>self-organizing dynamics may go through cycles of boom and bust. Only 
>>under the
>>assumption of optimality and equilibrium can we say "the State should not
>>interfere with the Market." The other assumption (of contingent
>>self-organization) has plenty of room for governments to intervene. And more
>>importantly, the local information version (due to Hayek and Simon) does not
>>apply to large corporations, where strategic thinking (as modeled by game
>>theory) is the key. So, far from justifying liberal assumptions the new view
>>problematizes markets. (Let's also remember that enemies of markets, such as
>>Marx, bought the equilibrium assumption completely: in his book Capital 
>>he can
>>figure out the "socially necessary labor time," and hence calculate the 
>>rate of
>>exploitation, only if profits are at equilibrium). Now, the new view of 
>>markets
>>stresses their decentralization (hence corporations do not belong there), and
>>this can hardly justify globalization which is mostly a result of 
>>corporations.
>>And similarly for warfare, the danger begins when the people who do not go to
>>war (the central planners) get to make the decisions. The soldiers who do the
>>actual killing and dying are never as careless as that.
>>
>>CTHEORY (Selinger): On a number of occasions, we have discussed different
>>aspects of computer modeling. In fact, you just brought up the topic of
>>modeling in connection with war-games. I remain unclear on the following. To
>>what extent should we use evidence from computer modeling in artificial
>>societies to get us to rethink traditional notions about human behavior? For
>>example, the standard metaphor that used is to think about mass violence is
>>contagion; this is because the violence seems to spread so quickly from 
>>person
>>to person and neighborhood to neighborhood. Yet, Joshua Epstein's 
>>simulation of
>>artificial genocide suggests that the view that a collective mind (or 
>>some sort
>>of infectious hysteria) underlies mass violence is illusory, perhaps even 
>>folk
>>psychological. Specifically, his work suggests that the origin of genocide
>>might be a series of individual decisions whereby people turn violent as a
>>result of their responses to local conditions. Thoughts?
>>
>>De Landa: All models, by definition, simplify things. Contagion models can be
>>very useful to study certain propagation effects, whether these are fads,
>>fashions or ideas. Can they also be useful to study the propagation of 
>>affect?
>>We can't tell in advance. What is important to see is that even if they turn
>>out to be useless to study violence that does not affect their usefulness in
>>other areas. Also, contagion models differ in the detail with which they
>>portray agency, from completely mechanical models with no agency at all (a
>>homogeneously socialized population) to models in which some form of virtual
>>agent is included. But the key problem is that no one agrees what agency is:
>>must it include some form of rational choice, and if so optimizing or
>>satisfying rationality? Should all psychological effects be eliminated 
>>and only
>>inter-subjective effects taken into account? How socialized and obedient 
>>should
>>we assume agents to be, and should these qualities be modeled as 
>>homogeneously
>>or heterogeneously distributed? Most of these issues have nothing to do with
>>computers and will haunt any modeling effort however informal.
>>
>>CTHEORY (Selinger): You have often questioned what is at stake, socially,
>>politically, and conceptually, when intellectuals engage in criticism. Simply
>>put, you are all too aware of the ease by which putatively "Critical 
>>Theorists"
>>are easily swayed by dogmatic convictions and too readily cognitively stymied
>>by uncritical presuppositions. One might even say that in so far as you
>>characterize yourself as a philosopher -- even if in the qualified sense of a
>>"street philosopher" who lacks official credentials -- you believe that it is
>>the duty of a philosopher to be critical. By contrast, some of the more
>>avant-garde STS theorists seem -- albeit perhaps only polemically and
>>rhetorically -- to eschew criticism. For example, Bruno Latour's latest
>>writings center on his rejection of criticism as an outdated mode of thought
>>that he associates with iconoclasm. He clearly sets the tone for this 
>>position
>>in We Have Never Been Modern in connection with acknowledging his 
>>intellectual
>>debt to Michel Serres, and he emphasizes it in Pandora's Hope, War of the
>>Worlds, and Iconoclash. Succinctly put, Latour claims that for six reasons
>>ideology critique (which he implicitly associates with normative critique as
>>such) is a faulty and patronizing form of analysis: (1) ideology critique 
>>fails
>>to accurately capture how, why, and when power is abused, (2) ideology 
>>critique
>>distorts how authority comes to be overly esteemed, (3) ideology critique
>>imputes "extravagant beliefs" onto whatever group is taken to be 
>>oppressed, (4)
>>ideology critique leaves the group that is perceived to be oppressed without
>>adequate grounds for liberation, (5) ideology critique distorts the relation
>>between critic and the object of criticism, and (6) ideology critique
>>accusatively "destroys a way of arguing." What do you think of this position?
>>
>>De Landa: First of all, I agree that the labels "critical" and "radical" have
>>been overused. In the last analysis one should never apply these labels to
>>oneself and wait for history to decide just how critical or radical one's 
>>work
>>really was (once its consequences have been played out). Latour's problem 
>>seems
>>to be more with the concept of "ideology" than that of "critique," and in 
>>that
>>I completely agree: to reduce the effects of power to those of creating a 
>>false
>>consciousness is wrong. But here is where the real problem is, since one 
>>cannot
>>just critique the concept of "ideology," the real test of one's radicality is
>>what one puts in its place. Or, to put it differently, how one
>>re-conceptualizes power. And here one's ontological commitments make all the
>>difference in the world. Can a realist like myself trust a theory of power
>>proposed by a non-realist, for example? Can a realist ever believe in a 
>>theory
>>of power developed, for example, by an ethnomethodologist, when one is aware
>>that for that person everything is reducible to phenomenological experience?
>>The same point applies to normativity: if one is a realist defending a
>>particular stance will depend on developing a new ethics, not just critiquing
>>old moralities. Here a Spinozian ethics of assemblages that may be mutually
>>enhancing versus those that are degrading may be the solution, but developing
>>this idea will also imply certain ontological commitments (to the
>>mind-independent reality of food and poison, for example).
>>
>>CTHEORY (Jensen): A similar question could be raised in relation to your work
>>on markets and anti-markets. In contrast to Empire by Hardt and Negri, which
>>explicitly hopes to have a political impact, your position is much less
>>straightforwardly normative. If, in a realist vein, you take your analysis to
>>be descriptive, how then do you think people might act to reap the 
>>benefits of
>>your description?
>>
>>De Landa: No, not at all. Remember first of all that a realist never settles
>>for a mere description. It is explanation that is the key and the latter
>>involves thinking about real mechanisms which may not be directly observable
>>(or describable). The disagreement with Empire is over the mechanisms one
>>postulates and the details of their workings. I do not accept the Marxist
>>version of these mechanisms (neither those through which markets are supposed
>>to operate nor those for the State) and believe the Marxist version leads to
>>practical dead ends regardless of how ready to be used in social 
>>interventions
>>the analysis seems to be. (To be blunt, any idea for social intervention 
>>based
>>on Marxism will be a failure). I do take normative positions in my books 
>>(such
>>that decentralization is more desirable than centralization for many reasons)
>>but I also realize than in an ethics of nourishing versus degrading 
>>assemblages
>>real-life experimentation (not a priori theorization) is the key. To use an
>>obvious example from environmental ethics: a little phosphorous feeds the 
>>soil;
>>too much poisons it. Where exactly the threshold is varies with type of 
>>soil so
>>it cannot be known a priori. But the normative statement "do not poison the
>>soil" is there nevertheless. Similarly for society: too much centralization
>>poisons (by concentrating power and privilege; by allowing corruption; by
>>taking away skills from routinized command-followers etc) but exactly how 
>>much
>>is to be decided by social experiments, how else?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
>
>
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